In this book Robin Bidwell tells the story of the great explorers of Arabia. For centuries Arabia was hardly known even to its Turkish overlords, except for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the pilgrim routes which let to them. The interior, which was to produce the great family of Ibn Saud and its puritan kingdom, was almost out of reach of Europeans. The exploits of Niebuhr in the 1760s, who was the first European to venture into the interior of southern Arabia, are the starting point for this history of adventures. Bidwell then tells the tales of Burton, Doughty and Philby (‘the greatest of Arabian explorers’), and of more recent explorers such as Freya Stark and Wilfred Thesiger.